Bayerische Mong Wagen Advice, ta. (E39 M62)

[RoadworkUK]

'ello.

 

My Dad has an E39 540i on an '03, because he's a hero. It's got somewhere hovering around the 100k miles mark and is used reasonably sparingly these days as for some inexplicable reason he bought an '09 Fiesta diesel as well.

 

Recently it's developed a strange and terrifying fault.

 

On start up, every now and again when you put it in "D", a warning on the dot matrix display informs you of "transmission fault". If your luck's in it'll go away on the next start-up, but most recently it's been pretty insistent.

 

He's got some kind of Happy-Shopper fault-code reader which is telling him "Error 60 Gearbox Switch", which presumably is the thing which tells the dashboard, cruise, ECU etc what gear you're in. A brief dalliance with Google seems to suggest that swapping this switch for A Other One is likely to make the issue evaporate.

 

Just asking if anyone else on here has been there, done that?

 

Ta very much.

 

[colino]

Welcome to BMW electrics.  I'd have the battery load tested to make sure it is doing its job, and if it is OK, do a hard reset by disconnecting the negative from the battery and hooking a jump lead to join it to the positive pole for 20-30 minutes.  If it is then still showing a fault after a 10 minute drive, get the system code read by something better than a hand-held.  It may well need a transmission position switch, but I'd do the free stuff first.

[spike60]

I used to have an older E34 540i with a ZF 5HP30 gearbox and it stared to cough up a "transprog 3" error and 3rd gear only limp home. Swapping the large good condition battery with the smaller crap one off our 525 TDS strangely cured it and got the TDS out of bed on a morning as well!